Everywhere you turn, there are people who would like those of us who are dreamers and creators of dreams to be as unhappy as they are as they plod their way through their miserable illusion they call "reality"."More of your grandiose pipe-dreams?"
"Another of your hair-brained schemes?"
"You'd better get into the world of reality!"
I've heard them all, especially over the past two weeks.
Lately, I've been working on a writing experiment. Actually, I started it a couple of years ago, but I had to stop because there were a couple of grinches who thought they were doing the world a favor by exposing and/or condemning me, rather than just enjoy being swept into a fantasy. After over a year I brought it back, and sure enough another one has showed up with the intention of publicly reducing the writing by demanding "real" facts from the writer.
What it comes down to is this: no one has the right to demand personal information from anyone who blogs. I share what I feel comfortable sharing, and I owe nothing more than that. If I'm in a wheelchair, or live in a cold water tenement, or am a 60 year-old meth addict, or am a millionaire celebrity living on Martha's Vineyard really is no one's business here on the web. I ask no personal information from any of the bloggers I enjoy reading, and they owe me nothing, not even the truth. They owe me even less about their private lives. It's my responsibility to chose to read them or not. But a whole lot of people out there seem to think that we owe them... everything.
What's happened? I guess nobody reads anymore, so they have no appreciation or understanding of nom de plumes. Instead of enjoying getting lost in a story and a character, they demand facts about the writer, convinced that you're trying to "pull a fast one" on your readers.
Since when was writing about the writer and not the writing?
They must not know about George Sand (Armandine Lucie Aurore Dupin), George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), or Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemens).
Several years ago I wrote under the pen name of Stephan Karl Waller and my god, you'd think I was the unknown gunman on the grassy knoll or something! My online presence, personal reputation, credibility, and good name were completely slandered, maligned, and dragged through the mud. The only control I had was to reveal myself here on this blog, completely defusing the power my detractors thought they had over me when they left comments calling me out by my real name. Most of them were women who had developed crushes on me and couldn't handle it when they found out I was a woman.
Personally, when I suss out that a blogger I admire has created for him or herself an alternate, fictional reality, I fairly quiver with the excitement of finding even more reasons to love their fascinating minds.
I think the World of Blog is a reincarnation of the World of Literature. There's some good and a whole lot of bad, but I'm seeing an evolution, where certain creative bloggers are inventing alternate realities under pen names, just like the literally giants of past centuries. It's intellectually orgasmic and I'm happy to be at the forefront of it. Let's just resist the urge to unmask a blogger who is only trying to tell a good story. The difference is, on a blog the fantasy is in real time. How new and exciting and creative is that!?
I think Anaïs Nin, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Twain Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein, Jim Morrison and John Lennon (to mention only a few) would have adored blogging.
Below is a list of only a few famous authors who write, or have written, under pen names. You may be surprised by some of them.
- Cecil Adams (author of The Straight Dope column—real name unknown)
- Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
- Acton Bell, Currer Bell, and Ellis Bell (Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë)
- Nicolas Bourbaki (a group of mainly French 20th-century mathematicians)
- Anthony Burgess (John ['Jack'] Burgess Wilson)
- Cassandra (William Connor)
- Sue Denim (Dav Pilkey - Sue Denim is a parody of the word pseudonym; also used by science fiction writer Lewis Shiner
- Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
- George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
- C. S. Forester (Cecil Smith)
- Anatole France (Jacques Anatole François Thibault)
- Anthony Gilbert (Lucy Beatrice Malleson)
- O. Henry (William Sidney Porter)
- Hergé (Georges Remi)
- Ann Landers (Esther Pauline Friedman)
- Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin)
- George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
- Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee)
- Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson)
- George Sand (Armandine Lucie Aurore Dupin)
- Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel - also used Theo. LeSie
- Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
- James Tiptree, Jr (Alice Sheldon)
- Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemens - also used "Sieur Louis de Conte" for his fictional biography of Joan of Arc)
- Abigail Van Buren (Dear Abby - Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips)
- Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
- Nora Roberts (J.D. Rob)
- Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll, Clive Hamilton)
17 comments:
Don't you just love miserable people whose mission in life is to make everyone else just as miserable?
Anne Rice wrote the Sleeping Beauty series under the pen neame of "Anne Roquelaire" (I don't know if I spelled that corrextly, but oh well
LOL
And I just thought of soemthing, many actors and musical artisits do the same thing.
Seriously, what's the BFD?
Gordon Sumner= Sting
Declan McManus= Elvis Costello
Norma Jean Dougherty=Marilyn Monroe
Robert Zimmerman=Bob Dylan
and so on...
Since when is writing under a pen name wrong? I frankly think using one's real name is nuts -- mostly because there are nuts out there!
Kay Dennison is the name I use on for writing so it's the name I use on my blog. Sue me! There are people who would be upset if they found some things I have written here in the Land of Blog(some people don't like the truth.).
You just do what is best for you, Steph. Those of us who know and care about you love your writing no matter what name you use and the others can go straight to hell.
We would never think of changing our names. Unless you wanted to call switch who Emo and Kiefer are. But Emo wouldn't like that and, for that matter, either would I.
Yeah me too.
(Who was that??)
I have a hard time understanding the motivation of folks we meet on the net sometimes I really do. But it has ever been thus, for some reason. I think this medium magnifies the sociopathic side of some folks or something. I'm speechless.
If they ever had a whiff of real problems in their lives I think they'd say less scorn. But it's a hard thing to wish on someone.
B.E. Earl - ???
Mwah-ha-ha-ha!!!
It's cowardice pure and simple. These are people who wouldn't dare say anything to your flesh and blood, so they become raging assholes hiding behind the 1's and 0's.
Fucktards
Fartknocking giant chunks of dad
Ville!!! ROTFLMAO!!!
The pen name is an established, respected tradition, so like all of you I don't see the problem. It doesn't matter to me what someone's name is if I enjoy their writing.
It comes down to people who haven't a drop of imagination or creativity in them -- their lives are devoid of dream and fantasy. Sad, really. I feel sorry for them but hey, they don't have to piss on my parade.
"Those who can't, teach"? I think not. Those who can't, think they're watchdogs for people who really don't give a damn. It's just negative attention-getting.
I'll bet they were the tattle-tales in their families when they were kids.
"Fartknocking giant chunks of dad"
Oh Ville,thats classic! LOL!!!
All fiction is based on a beginning of "imagine if...." Being upset about you writing a blog as another person is as silly as being upset about Huckleberry Finn, or any other work of fiction that is written from a first-person perspective.
I'm opposed to the whole idea of "outing" someone...whether it be exposing a person's legal name, their sexual orientation, mental health diagnosis, criminal conviction history or any other aspect of who they are the individual has chosen not to share with the general public. If someone chooses to keep certain aspects of their identity or persoanl information private, that's their business.
And Dean Koontz used to write under the names of Richard Paige and something-Nichols (can't think of the first name he used). I don't see what the big deal is either.
And when you get right down to it, our own names weren't really ours: they were the names our parents chose for us.
"...our own names weren't really ours: they were the names our parents chose for us."
Yea, verily.
I spent the first few years of my online life with an address book full of pseudonyms; nowadays I hide in plain sight. Difference? Not so much, really. I have the same credibility, or lack thereof, either way. And I have decided that an established pseudonym differs from a "real" name, in terms of taking responsibility for one's own words, in exactly one regard: you can't look up the pseudonym in the phone book. (I once got one of my nyms listed in the book, just to prove the point.)
That said, I have to say that the most ingenious pseudonym of recent years was "James Tiptree, Jr." Even if you guessed that it was a pseudonym, you still assumed it was a guy: who else would bother with "Junior"?
Yikes.. I'm sorry you've encountered some mean-spirited people out here. I'm at a loss to understand what it is about a having a pen name that gets their hackles up. As you stated, it's a long-standing tradition that many employ. The very act of blogging generally deals with some (often a large) degree of anonymity. I don't get the problem, but I sure am sorry you have to deal with it.
And Dean Koontz used to write under the names of Richard Paige and something-Nichols (can't think of the first name he used). I don't see what the big deal is either.
And when you get right down to it, our own names weren't really ours: they were the names our parents chose for us.
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